


You Mend My Fences, I'll Mend Your Heart

by exbex



Category: due South
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex





	You Mend My Fences, I'll Mend Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TanyaReed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TanyaReed/gifts).



They got back to Chicago at the end of November, and Ray felt cheated. He’d been fantasizing about summer in Chicago for the last several weeks, even though there had been plenty of warm days in Inuvik at the end of the Quest, and the reality was that a Chicago summer had a tendency to turn from breezy and pleasant to fry-eggs-on-the-sidewalk hot and smelly. Regardless, it was enough to send Ray on an impromptu road-trip, and for some reason he asked Fraser to tag along.

**

There can’t exactly be an elephant in the backseat of a car when only one person knows it’s there, but Ray is still agitated, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, chewing his gum with unnecessary rigor. Fraser notices, and raises an eyebrow at him from the passenger side, but doesn’t ask, doesn’t comment, just looks out the window.

There’s no way Fraser knows now, no way Fraser knew then, and there are too many things to sort out. Why he hadn’t bothered bringing it up while they were on the Quest (and that one was easy; the snow and the cold was like a peaceful numbing presence, healing up a wound), how he could bring it up now without ruining things between him and his best friend, and why he had insisted on keeping things a secret before the Quest (because there was something fragile about it, something tentative and uncertain and if he could just keep it hidden, maybe it could grow into something solid).

They’re heading into Springfield before anything is actually said.

Ray can see it before Fraser actually says anything. He has his hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, sun shades flipped down, but he can see it, the way Fraser shifts in his seat, the way his mouth begins to quirk. Ray speaks, cuts him off before he can even begin with a question.

“Meg and I…” It’s strange, to say her name like that, even though he’d gotten quite adept at saying it in moments of tenderness or passion, and it’s even stranger to add to it, to speak about them together, as if they have ever actually been a couple, as if things ever really had any chance to work between them at all.

He can’t even continue the sentence. He bites down on his lower lip and waits for Fraser’s oversized brain to decipher what Ray was trying to tell him. Fraser has a confused look on his face, noticeable only because his brow is furrowed just slightly. His eyes widen, just a little, and he exhales, a surprised pfft sound escaping his lips. “Oh dear,” he says, rubbing his eyebrow so hard it’s a wonder he doesn’t shear it off.

**

They spend the night somewhere in Kentucky, in one of those motels that’s just this side of seedy, the kind that Ray can never sleep deeply in because his cop sense is on high alert for whatever might be going on just outside the door of his room. Ray stands beneath the spray of the shower but can’t seem to wash off the grime that always sticks during a long road trip.

When he gets out of the tiny bathroom, he sees that Fraser has returned, apparently having left to procure beer and Chinese food. Ray fees torn between gratitude (and mystified as to how Fraser managed to find decent Chinese food in the middle of Nowheresville, USA), and dread, because Fraser has a look of intent on his face, the one that only those who know him well can decipher, and he knows that it means that they’re going to have “a talk.”

Ray decides to spare Fraser the discomfort of bringing the subject back up. “Look,” he says, pushing rice and soy sauce around the bottom of a carton, “you didn’t know, you couldn’t have known, ‘cuz it’s not as if we were exactly forthcoming, so I’m not mad, and I didn’t tell you to make you uncomfortable or to call you out. I just….” He pushed back from the small table that was threatening to drive him insane with that persistent wobbliness that was apparently endemic to cheap, fake wooden furniture. “I’m not mad, okay?”

Fraser peered at him quizzically over his own carton. “I’d beg to differ, Ray.”  
Ray sighed and looked down at his hands. “Okay, you’re right. You kind of made me sick, kissing my girlfriend while I was sitting at a campfire not twenty feet away. It’s not buddies, Frase.”

Fraser nodded and chewed his lower lip for a moment. “To be fair, Ray, that kiss was nothing more than to say goodbye. It was a finality.”

“Yeah, well, it was more than I ever got.” Ray hadn’t expected to hear the bitterness in his own voice.

A long, uncomfortable silence passed between them. When Fraser next spoke, it was barely audible. “I’m not entirely sure that it’s me you’re angry with, Ray.”

And that statement rang with so much truth that there was really nothing more to say.

**

Florida was warm, sunny, and had that ocean smell that Ray could never quite decide if he liked or not. When Vecchio opened the door, he and Fraser grinned and embraced like a couple of veterans or something. Ray startled himself somewhat with the realization that, essentially, they probably were just that.

When Stella came into view it took a moment for Ray to decipher that the weird churning of emotion in his insides was just relief at seeing Stella happy and relaxed. We’re friends, he realized as she hugged him, and felt just a little stupid at not getting it before now.

**

After a few days, they wound their way from Florida to Arizona in order to spend Christmas with Ray’s parents. Any bad air between Ray and Fraser seemed to have cleared, and the companionship between them settled into the easy rhythms that they had experienced on the quest. When they finally made their way back to Chicago, it was time to pack Fraser up and send him back home. Ray felt an ache in his chest as they waited for Fraser’s plane to board.

“Ray…” Fraser hesitated. He’d been doing that a lot more these days, as if he knew that he didn’t really have all that many answers and he realized he didn’t have to panic about it. “I usually don’t see fit to meddle in the affairs of the heart, but I wondered if I might leave you with a word or two of advice concerning your relationship with Inspector Thatcher.”

Ray raised a dubious eyebrow. “I’m listening, Frase.”

“You’re both in the prime of your lives, she’s currently stationed in Ottawa, which is 1273 kilometers from Chicago, a twelve-hour drive, but only two hours by flight, though you would lose an hour because of the time difference.” He paused, gauging Ray’s reaction.

Ray nodded, slowly. “So basically, you’re telling me that life’s too fucking boring not to try.”

“Precisely, Ray.”

**

Meg shuts and locks the door of her apartment behind her at 7:32 PM on New Year’s Eve. She has plans for the evening. They involve only a glass or two of wine and perhaps some old movies, but they are her plans, and she intends to enjoy them, regardless of how low-key some would find them.

At 7:44 PM, Meg stops lying to herself and sits down wearily on her sofa. She has an exciting new promotion, she is back in her home country, she no longer has to oversee junior deputy liaison officers, and she is completely miserable.

Her misery has one root cause that she has been trying, and failing, to ignore for months.

She thought that they didn’t have enough in common, that they were too different. But the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that they have all the right things in common, and everything else is a minor detail.

At 8:17 PM, a knock on Meg’s door interrupts her stewing. She frowns; there’s absolutely no one she’s expecting tonight. When she peers through the peephole to find Ray Kowalski standing in the hall, she promptly loses her breath, and she has to close her eyes for a moment and steady her hand before she opens the door to let him in.

Months in the Northwest Territories chasing the remains of a failed expedition should have left him looking haggard, but he looks better than he had the last time she’d seen him, more relaxed, less fidgety, and stronger somehow. She leads him to the sofa after he declines her offer of something to drink, and they sit in an awkward silence for some moments.

“Ray, I’m s-“

“Don’t,” he cuts her off with one of his hands laid on one of hers. “I mean, just let me ask a few questions first, and, okay, I know this is weird, but humor me. Give me a yes or a no with each question. And then, it’s whatever you want. If you want me to walk out of here and never talk to you again, fine. If you want us to be friends, fine. If you want something more, greatness.”

Meg assumes he’s not aware that he’s gripping her hand, maybe to keep his own from shaking.

“Did you think we were too different to be good for each other?”

“Yes.”

“Did you not know why you liked me?”

“Yes.”

“Could you explain it now, if you had to?”

She pauses at this one. “No.” He gives a little smile, as if relieved.

“Would you be willing to give us another shot?”

“Yes,” she answers immediately, because she knows herself, and she’s no fool.

“Does the whole idea scare you out of your mind like it does me?”

“Yes.”

He swallows, and she can tell his nervousness, as it’s written all over his face. “Is it okay if I kiss you now?”

She doesn’t answer, just leans over and kisses him, not tentatively or softly. He lets go of her hand to put both of his arms around her, and they remain locked in their embrace for what seems like an eternity, though it’s only a few minutes. They’re both slightly breathless when they pull away from one another. Ray is wearing a barely repressed grin that’s entirely infectious. He takes her hand once again and inhales sharply. “Would you think I’m a damn pig if I told you I brought condoms with me?”

Meg can’t help her grin. “No, I would think you’re brilliant and well-prepared.”

**

Neither Ray nor Meg are awake to see the clock’s numbers switch to midnight, but when they drift off to sleep, tangled up in one another, it’s with the knowledge that they’ll be spending the next year together.


End file.
